INLS 181 Assignment

1. "Policy on Internet Sexual Harassment"
The policy requires that "[s]ite-blocking software ... be installed on all [library] computers" so as to: "a. block child pornography and obscene material (hard core pornography)"; and "b. block material deemed Harmful to Juveniles under applicable Virginia statutes and legal precedents (soft core pornography)."
----- Loudoun County Public Library

2. Minneapolis Public Library staff member filed complaint against the Minneapolis Public Library, alleging that policy of unrestricted Internet access creates a sexually hostile work environment, which is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

"My employer has adopted an Internet access policy which allows for unrestricted access to sexually explicit Internet sites. My employer further allow patrons of the Library to print out on Library printers sexually explicit and obscene picture and materials from the Internet. As a result of this policy I have been forced to view computer screens filled with images depicting explicit sexual activity including bestiality, child pornography, oral, anal and vaginal sexual acts, homosexuality, and explicit photos of male and female genitalia and sexual poses."

What is CIPA

* Requires all schools and libraries participating in certain federal programs to install and enforce technology protection measures that protect against access to material that is obscene, child pornographic, or harmful to minors

* Otherwise: funding that is available through the Library Services and Technology Act, Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and on the Universal Service discount program known as the E-rate (Public Law 106-554) will be affected.

Content Regulations in Media Have Become a Norm

Broadcasting: No indecent programming between 6 am and 10 pm on any day by any public radio station or public television station
Public Telecommunication Act of 1992

Cable Television: a cable operator is permitted to enforce...policy of prohibiting programming that the cable operator reasonably believes describes or depicts sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards."
1992 Cable Act, ¡ì10 (a)(2), 106 Stat. 148

Telephone: " Adult information service providers are required to utilize credit card authorization, access codes, or scrambling in order to limit access to consenting adults over the age of eighteen."
In re Regulations Concerning Indecent Communications by Telephone (1990)

A telephone company can terminate a dial-a-porn service as a matter of business judgment, i.e. that adverse publicity might affect public relations and profits.
Carlin Communication Inc v. Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph

Regulatory Rationales in Content Regulation

* Indecency is protected by Constitution, but Government has compelling interest in protecting children from exposure to patently offensive, sex-related material

* If Government chooses the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest

Internet Challenge

* Content regulation on Internet is a global effort. A content provider can easily move the "patently offensive" content to a server located outside of U.S.

* In order for a zoning law to be valid, it (i) "does not unduly restrict adult access to the material; and (ii) minors have no First Amendment right to read or view the banned material". A blanket blocking on Internet indecency violates the (i) requirement.
Reno v. ACLU, 1997

* Setting up "Adult Zone" or "Time Zone" is not feasible for the same reason that indecent source may come from outside of US, where US has no control.

* To use credit card verification and adult password verification systems to verify viewers' age can impose too much burden on Internet content providers and would discourage users from accessing their sites, according to a study conducted by District Court.
Reno v. ACLU, 1997

CIPA Argument

"Taxpayers should not be required to fund obscenity or child pornography or any means of accessing it; nobody should be able to use publicly funded library computers to access obscene pictures or child pornography; and libraries should be responsible for protecting children from this material and other material which is harmful to them. Period."
----Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI)

``Some people think that having a child exposed to objectionable material is so horrific that anyone's civil rights can be sacrificed to protect that child,''
----Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association

"men who view pornography at the public libraries create a hostile environment for the women who work in or use the libraries"
----Laura Morgan of the Chicago Public Library

"local libraries, not the federal government, should set Internet access policies"
---Carolyn Caywood of Virginia Beach's library system

What Should Libraries Do

Choice one: join San Francisco, ban Internet filters at public libraries, and lose about $20,000 in federal funds because of the Children's Internet Protection Act

Choice two: join 3000 US libraries (20% of 15,000 in total) that have already installed filters, and argue with the unhappy adult patrons

Popup Killer (1.32) vs. Popup Stopper (2.4)

There are free music, free download, free novels etc on the Internet. However nothing is really free. Just like watching television on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox for free, we pay the programs by watching TV commercials. Commercial websites are following the suits by inserting commercials in every possible way. Popup advertisement is one of them. Furthermore, the lack of regulations on Internet has created many annoying popups when you click on a seemingly innocent link. Imaging that you are doing your presentation online, and you click on a link to provide further information. But the page appears with a chain of commercial popups. Or you are surfing in your office with your colleagues around you. You accidentally click a link, but what come out are more than ten windows of sexually oriented pages. What an embarrassing moment!

There are other popups, which are useful for the first time. However, when it comes out every time you go to the website, that is annoying. Examples include the popup page after you finish download from www.download.com, subscription invitation pages after you leave magazine websites such as www.time.com or www.nytimes.com, version selection window when you open the homepage of www.cnn.com.

Fortunately, there have been a slew of programs that stops popup windows. They are going to give people the control over their window screens the way remote controllers give to TV viewers. The two most popular ones are Popup Killer (1.32) and Popup Stopper (2.4). On www.download.com, the former has been downloaded 238,602 times with a rating of 78%; the latter has been downloaded 118,063 times with a rating of 85% as of September 26, 2001. What are the differences, and which one is better? The following comparisons try to answer the questions.

What are the characteristics of popup windows? First they are opened unintentionally. They appear in new windows. Some of them have strange shapes. However it is not easy develop programs that have the intelligence to identify the different coding methods. Furthermore, it is very hard to discriminate popup windows with pages that are intended to be opened in another window.

Therefore one common trait both programs share is to circumvent the job to identify popup windows. Popup Stopper chooses a non-discriminate approach. It simply prevents any new window to come up, on matter it is a link you really intend to open in a new window, or a new window you want to open by clicking the IE icon on your desktop. However you can let a window appear by pressing Shift or Ctrl. Popup Killer adopts the "You decide" approach. It lets all windows come up, but will provide a list of windows that are open, and depend on you to add those you don't want to see in the future to the "Blacklist". Next time, those windows in the blacklist will be killed.

Popup Stopper is much easier for newcomers if you properly install it. "Properly" means you read the explanations during installation and check those boxes you want Popup Stopper to do. Then with no further interference, it just sits there, loyally stops any new windows. If you want to disable it, click on the icon in the system tray. When the color of the cross sign changes from red to gray, it is disabled. Next time you enable it, it will remind you to use Shift or Ctrl key to open new windows you want to.

Trouble? The trouble is that you will have to use both of your hands while you are surfing the net: one to press the Shift or Ctrl key, and the other to click the mouse. That is just too much for some people.

Popup Killer is a bit more complicated for new comers. After installation, popup windows still come out. You are wondering why, and click on the icon in the system tray. Then you see a list of names of all new windows and a window for blacklist. You try to add a name to the blacklist and close all windows to see how it works. Bingo, the window whose name is on the blacklist is soon "killed". Then you find more choices such as that you can download or upload the blacklist to your server so community members can share their blacklist without having to add them by themselves.

Trouble? You have to manually add those popup windows by yourselves whenever you encounter new ones. So it is not a good idea to prevent surprises. Although you can download blacklists from server, they may contain links you want to see. Then you have to manually delete them from the blacklist. Besides, Popup Killer sometimes can't kill windows immediately. That would consume CPU resources.

Another criterion I always use to judge any freeware and the responsibility of its developer is whether there are any remnants left after the program is uninstalled. Those remnants can deteriorate computer performance.

I used the uninstallation choice provided by Popup Killer to uninstall it. Since Panicware, the company that develop Popup Stopper, didn't provide a choice for uninstall the software, I used Add/Move Software in Control Panel to uninstall it. I then restart my computer and use registry to check how many entries each program has left. Popup Killer left 5 traces. Popup Stopper left 4 traces. I am not quite familiar with registry or how devastating those entries could be, but I really don't like programs that leave too many entries in registry.

Overall, Popup Stopper seems to be slightly better than Popup Killer, since the former is smaller, easy to use, cause less system trouble. However each can be used perfectly well in different circumstances. For example, if you are a heavy surfer, always encountering unexpected popups or if you work in a public environment and want to prevent any surprises, obviously Popup Stopper is a better choice. The trouble of having to use both hands might be offset by those conveniences. However if you are a loyal user of your favorite websites, and your server keeps a good blacklist, or you use your computer a lot at home, Popup Killer is your best choice. You won't see those popups anymore, without changing your surfing habits.

Web Design Comparison----
University Student Portal/Gateway

Many universities have web pages that are positioned as the portal/gateway for their students. They provide all sorts of information that students often need, such as academic information, course information, student profile, financial information, university services, events, sports, local services and entertainment etc. The three student portals that are to be discussed in this review are hereandnow of Northwestern University, studentcentral of UNC at Chapel Hill, and Student Life and Service of University of South California.

All of the three websites are trying to provide an exhaustive list of useful information that a student may need during his/her stay on campus. However, a single glance can tell us that they also differ profoundly the way information is presented on a single page, which directly affects their web usability.

The winner is hereandnow from NU. It narrowly defeats USC Student Life and Services for the following advantages. The most obvious advantage is that it is a page with a combination of static and dynamic information, and it places those links that are most important to students in a prominent place. Static information refers to those links that won't change for a relatively long time. The functions of those links are simply to lead a user to destination websites, which may contain lots of dynamic information themselves. Dynamic information refers to those links that are updated as events occur, such as news, events or important notices. Two shaded areas below "breaking news" on hereandnow are devoted to dynamic events and static links that are most important to NU students. Second, hereandnow provides three search areas, which can search in the Web, in NU and in NU phonebook respectively. This design can save students lots of time by narrowing down their searches within NU or phonebook. Third, the layout is simple and clean with white background, blue links which turns red once it is visited, and NU-purple guidelines. A fourth trait I especially like is the little local weather button on the upper-left corner and a small choice of newspapers and search engines, which are frequent tools for students.

USC Student Life and Services is also well designed. If it can be combined with dynamic information, and give up the dark brown background, which I just don't feel comfortable with, and add more search features, it can easily defeat NU hereandnow. The biggest advantage is that it is an interactive web page. It not only provides relevant information for students, but also works as a bridge between students and the school. Students can create personalized portfolio & resume, update profiles, register for class as well as seek help or has his/her voice heard by the school. Those functions are achieved with customization tools, such as "Your Portfolio", "Your Resume" and "Your Student Government". The second advantage is easy navigation with careful choice and presentation of the most important links for students, such as registration, student information, course information etc. However it still gives plenty of room for other less important links, such as campus services, local services. The layout is simple, with lots of information but not crowded.

UNC Studentcentral is simply not a match with the other two. First of all, it has all the information, but most of them are buried under category names, which many students don't even try to venture with. The page is dominated by two login choices that are highlighted with blue background and draw all the attention. The "warning" is predominant, too. Second, the website is not well organized. The category names and logins seem to be randomly put on a white sheet. There is no decoration or lines or background color that indicates that content is put in a coherent way. Third, I especially dislike popup menus when one moves the mouse arrow to the category names. He/she has to point the mouse arrow to the right place. Once the menu is lost, one has to start again. There are lots of empty places on the web page. Why not just put a few links that are used most often on the webpage, and put the other links under "More"?

The success of hereandnow and Student Life and Services is that those web pages are user-centered. Webmasters take the pain to think about what are the most important things for users, and design websites in such a way than provides the most information and functionality to their users. The failure of Studentcentral lies in indiscrimination of information and bad presentation. For example, webmail is an important link for UNC students, but students just have trouble locating it among the 21 links in the "Student Services"popup menu.

Library's CIPA Dilemma

(click here to download powerpoint presentation)

A Poll-----Do You Agree or Disagree

What is CIPA

Content Regulations in Media Have Become a Norm

Regulatory Rationales in Content Regulation

Internet Challenge

CIPA Argument

What Should Libraries Do

Popup Killer (1.32) vs. Popup Stopper (2.4)

Web Design Comparison----
University Student Portal/Gateway



Article Presentation Software Evaluation Web Design Review Expert Source Web Site Digital Reference Site INLS 181 Home		Assignment 1: Article Presentation---Due: October 11, 2001 Library's CIPA Dilemma (click here to download powerpoint presentation) A Poll-----Do You Agree or Disagree 1. "Policy on Internet Sexual Harassment" The policy requires that "[s]ite-blocking software ... be installed on all [library] computers" so as to: "a. block child pornography and obscene material (hard core pornography)"; and "b. block material deemed Harmful to Juveniles under applicable Virginia statutes and legal precedents (soft core pornography)." ----- Loudoun County Public Library Judge said... 2. Minneapolis Public Library staff member filed complaint against the Minneapolis Public Library, alleging that policy of unrestricted Internet access creates a sexually hostile work environment, which is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. "My employer has adopted an Internet access policy which allows for unrestricted access to sexually explicit Internet sites. My employer further allow patrons of the Library to print out on Library printers sexually explicit and obscene picture and materials from the Internet. As a result of this policy I have been forced to view computer screens filled with images depicting explicit sexual activity including bestiality, child pornography, oral, anal and vaginal sexual acts, homosexuality, and explicit photos of male and female genitalia and sexual poses." EEOC said... What is CIPA * Stands for Children Internet Protection Act * Requires all schools and libraries participating in certain federal programs to install and enforce technology protection measures that protect against access to material that is obscene, child pornographic, or harmful to minors * Otherwise: funding that is available through the Library Services and Technology Act, Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and on the Universal Service discount program known as the E-rate (Public Law 106-554) will be affected. * Went into effect on April 20, 2001 * 20% of 15,000 libraries have complied with the Act * However, on March 20, 2001, its constitutionality was challenged by American Library Association, People for The American Way Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union Content Regulations in Media Have Become a Norm Broadcasting: No indecent programming between 6 am and 10 pm on any day by any public radio station or public television station Public Telecommunication Act of 1992 Cable Television: a cable operator is permitted to enforce...policy of prohibiting programming that the cable operator reasonably believes describes or depicts sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards." 1992 Cable Act, ¡ì10 (a)(2), 106 Stat. 148 Telephone: " Adult information service providers are required to utilize credit card authorization, access codes, or scrambling in order to limit access to consenting adults over the age of eighteen." In re Regulations Concerning Indecent Communications by Telephone (1990) A telephone company can terminate a dial-a-porn service as a matter of business judgment, i.e. that adverse publicity might affect public relations and profits. Carlin Communication Inc v. Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Regulatory Rationales in Content Regulation * Obscene language is not protected by Constitution * Indecency is protected by Constitution, but Government has compelling interest in protecting children from exposure to patently offensive, sex-related material * If Government chooses the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest Internet Challenge * Content regulation on Internet is a global effort. A content provider can easily move the "patently offensive" content to a server located outside of U.S. * In order for a zoning law to be valid, it (i) "does not unduly restrict adult access to the material; and (ii) minors have no First Amendment right to read or view the banned material". A blanket blocking on Internet indecency violates the (i) requirement. Reno v. ACLU, 1997 * Setting up "Adult Zone" or "Time Zone" is not feasible for the same reason that indecent source may come from outside of US, where US has no control. * To use credit card verification and adult password verification systems to verify viewers' age can impose too much burden on Internet content providers and would discourage users from accessing their sites, according to a study conducted by District Court. Reno v. ACLU, 1997 CIPA Argument "Taxpayers should not be required to fund obscenity or child pornography or any means of accessing it; nobody should be able to use publicly funded library computers to access obscene pictures or child pornography; and libraries should be responsible for protecting children from this material and other material which is harmful to them. Period." ----Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) ``Some people think that having a child exposed to objectionable material is so horrific that anyone's civil rights can be sacrificed to protect that child,'' ----Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association "men who view pornography at the public libraries create a hostile environment for the women who work in or use the libraries" ----Laura Morgan of the Chicago Public Library "local libraries, not the federal government, should set Internet access policies" ---Carolyn Caywood of Virginia Beach's library system What Should Libraries Do Choice one: join San Francisco, ban Internet filters at public libraries, and lose about $20,000 in federal funds because of the Children's Internet Protection Act Choice two: join 3000 US libraries (20% of 15,000 in total) that have already installed filters, and argue with the unhappy adult patrons And wait for the court results of ALA v. United States Reference: San Francisco bans Internet filters at public libraries EFF's Presentation on Internet Blocking in Schools and Libraries Judge's Opinion on Mainstream Loudoun v. Loudoun County Library Staff Member's Complaint toward Minneapolis Public Library EEOC Determination on Complaint toward Minneapolis Public Library House Telecom Subcommittee Holds Hearing on CIPA and E-Rate Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium v. FCC, 116 S.Ct. 2374 (1996) FCC v. Facifica Foundation, 438 U.S.726 (1978) Reno v. ACLU (1997) Sable Communications of Calif., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115 (1989) Frieden, R. ( 1995) "Contamination of the Common Carrier Concept in Telecommunications". Telecommunication Policy. Vol 19, No. 9. pp. 685-697 Krattenmaker, Thomas G.(1998) Telecommunications Law and Policy. 2nd Ed. Durham: Carolina Academic Press Return Assignment 2: Software Evaluation--Due by 6:00 pm, Thursday, September 27th Popup Killer (1.32) vs. Popup Stopper (2.4) There are free music, free download, free novels etc on the Internet. However nothing is really free. Just like watching television on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox for free, we pay the programs by watching TV commercials. Commercial websites are following the suits by inserting commercials in every possible way. Popup advertisement is one of them. Furthermore, the lack of regulations on Internet has created many annoying popups when you click on a seemingly innocent link. Imaging that you are doing your presentation online, and you click on a link to provide further information. But the page appears with a chain of commercial popups. Or you are surfing in your office with your colleagues around you. You accidentally click a link, but what come out are more than ten windows of sexually oriented pages. What an embarrassing moment! There are other popups, which are useful for the first time. However, when it comes out every time you go to the website, that is annoying. Examples include the popup page after you finish download from www.download.com, subscription invitation pages after you leave magazine websites such as www.time.com or www.nytimes.com, version selection window when you open the homepage of www.cnn.com. Fortunately, there have been a slew of programs that stops popup windows. They are going to give people the control over their window screens the way remote controllers give to TV viewers. The two most popular ones are Popup Killer (1.32) and Popup Stopper (2.4). On www.download.com, the former has been downloaded 238,602 times with a rating of 78%; the latter has been downloaded 118,063 times with a rating of 85% as of September 26, 2001. What are the differences, and which one is better? The following comparisons try to answer the questions. Comparison 1: Designing Principles What are the characteristics of popup windows? First they are opened unintentionally. They appear in new windows. Some of them have strange shapes. However it is not easy develop programs that have the intelligence to identify the different coding methods. Furthermore, it is very hard to discriminate popup windows with pages that are intended to be opened in another window. Therefore one common trait both programs share is to circumvent the job to identify popup windows. Popup Stopper chooses a non-discriminate approach. It simply prevents any new window to come up, on matter it is a link you really intend to open in a new window, or a new window you want to open by clicking the IE icon on your desktop. However you can let a window appear by pressing Shift or Ctrl. Popup Killer adopts the "You decide" approach. It lets all windows come up, but will provide a list of windows that are open, and depend on you to add those you don't want to see in the future to the "Blacklist". Next time, those windows in the blacklist will be killed. Comparison 2: Ease of Use Popup Stopper is much easier for newcomers if you properly install it. "Properly" means you read the explanations during installation and check those boxes you want Popup Stopper to do. Then with no further interference, it just sits there, loyally stops any new windows. If you want to disable it, click on the icon in the system tray. When the color of the cross sign changes from red to gray, it is disabled. Next time you enable it, it will remind you to use Shift or Ctrl key to open new windows you want to. Trouble? The trouble is that you will have to use both of your hands while you are surfing the net: one to press the Shift or Ctrl key, and the other to click the mouse. That is just too much for some people. Popup Killer is a bit more complicated for new comers. After installation, popup windows still come out. You are wondering why, and click on the icon in the system tray. Then you see a list of names of all new windows and a window for blacklist. You try to add a name to the blacklist and close all windows to see how it works. Bingo, the window whose name is on the blacklist is soon "killed". Then you find more choices such as that you can download or upload the blacklist to your server so community members can share their blacklist without having to add them by themselves. Trouble? You have to manually add those popup windows by yourselves whenever you encounter new ones. So it is not a good idea to prevent surprises. Although you can download blacklists from server, they may contain links you want to see. Then you have to manually delete them from the blacklist. Besides, Popup Killer sometimes can't kill windows immediately. That would consume CPU resources. Comparison 3: completeness of uninstalling Another criterion I always use to judge any freeware and the responsibility of its developer is whether there are any remnants left after the program is uninstalled. Those remnants can deteriorate computer performance. I used the uninstallation choice provided by Popup Killer to uninstall it. Since Panicware, the company that develop Popup Stopper, didn't provide a choice for uninstall the software, I used Add/Move Software in Control Panel to uninstall it. I then restart my computer and use registry to check how many entries each program has left. Popup Killer left 5 traces. Popup Stopper left 4 traces. I am not quite familiar with registry or how devastating those entries could be, but I really don't like programs that leave too many entries in registry. Comparison 4: Sizes Popup Killer is 2,746kb; Popup Stopper is 364 kb. Recommendations Overall, Popup Stopper seems to be slightly better than Popup Killer, since the former is smaller, easy to use, cause less system trouble. However each can be used perfectly well in different circumstances. For example, if you are a heavy surfer, always encountering unexpected popups or if you work in a public environment and want to prevent any surprises, obviously Popup Stopper is a better choice. The trouble of having to use both hands might be offset by those conveniences. However if you are a loyal user of your favorite websites, and your server keeps a good blacklist, or you use your computer a lot at home, Popup Killer is your best choice. You won't see those popups anymore, without changing your surfing habits. Return Assignment 3: Web Design Review--Due by 6:00 pm, Thursday, October 11th Web Design Comparison---- University Student Portal/Gateway Many universities have web pages that are positioned as the portal/gateway for their students. They provide all sorts of information that students often need, such as academic information, course information, student profile, financial information, university services, events, sports, local services and entertainment etc. The three student portals that are to be discussed in this review are hereandnow of Northwestern University, studentcentral of UNC at Chapel Hill, and Student Life and Service of University of South California. All of the three websites are trying to provide an exhaustive list of useful information that a student may need during his/her stay on campus. However, a single glance can tell us that they also differ profoundly the way information is presented on a single page, which directly affects their web usability. The winner is hereandnow from NU. It narrowly defeats USC Student Life and Services for the following advantages. The most obvious advantage is that it is a page with a combination of static and dynamic information, and it places those links that are most important to students in a prominent place. Static information refers to those links that won't change for a relatively long time. The functions of those links are simply to lead a user to destination websites, which may contain lots of dynamic information themselves. Dynamic information refers to those links that are updated as events occur, such as news, events or important notices. Two shaded areas below "breaking news" on hereandnow are devoted to dynamic events and static links that are most important to NU students. Second, hereandnow provides three search areas, which can search in the Web, in NU and in NU phonebook respectively. This design can save students lots of time by narrowing down their searches within NU or phonebook. Third, the layout is simple and clean with white background, blue links which turns red once it is visited, and NU-purple guidelines. A fourth trait I especially like is the little local weather button on the upper-left corner and a small choice of newspapers and search engines, which are frequent tools for students. USC Student Life and Services is also well designed. If it can be combined with dynamic information, and give up the dark brown background, which I just don't feel comfortable with, and add more search features, it can easily defeat NU hereandnow. The biggest advantage is that it is an interactive web page. It not only provides relevant information for students, but also works as a bridge between students and the school. Students can create personalized portfolio & resume, update profiles, register for class as well as seek help or has his/her voice heard by the school. Those functions are achieved with customization tools, such as "Your Portfolio", "Your Resume" and "Your Student Government". The second advantage is easy navigation with careful choice and presentation of the most important links for students, such as registration, student information, course information etc. However it still gives plenty of room for other less important links, such as campus services, local services. The layout is simple, with lots of information but not crowded. UNC Studentcentral is simply not a match with the other two. First of all, it has all the information, but most of them are buried under category names, which many students don't even try to venture with. The page is dominated by two login choices that are highlighted with blue background and draw all the attention. The "warning" is predominant, too. Second, the website is not well organized. The category names and logins seem to be randomly put on a white sheet. There is no decoration or lines or background color that indicates that content is put in a coherent way. Third, I especially dislike popup menus when one moves the mouse arrow to the category names. He/she has to point the mouse arrow to the right place. Once the menu is lost, one has to start again. There are lots of empty places on the web page. Why not just put a few links that are used most often on the webpage, and put the other links under "More"? The success of hereandnow and Student Life and Services is that those web pages are user-centered. Webmasters take the pain to think about what are the most important things for users, and design websites in such a way than provides the most information and functionality to their users. The failure of Studentcentral lies in indiscrimination of information and bad presentation. For example, webmail is an important link for UNC students, but students just have trouble locating it among the 21 links in the "Student Services"popup menu. Return

Library's CIPA Dilemma

(click here to download powerpoint presentation)

A Poll-----Do You Agree or Disagree

What is CIPA

Content Regulations in Media Have Become a Norm

Regulatory Rationales in Content Regulation

Internet Challenge

CIPA Argument

What Should Libraries Do

Popup Killer (1.32) vs. Popup Stopper (2.4)

Web Design Comparison---- University Student Portal/Gateway

Web Design Comparison----
University Student Portal/Gateway